Sailors Blast Coverage Of Iowa

March 16, 1990

Thanks again Daily Press for continuing to cast the eternal light of doom on our proud battleship, the USS Iowa. Since April 19, you and other members of your profession have done what you could to publish or air unfounded opinion, untruths and hearsay, which seemingly serves no purpose but to sell your product.

Not only have we had to endure such gross misconceptions and deviations from fact, which you stated in your recent editorial, "Trouble afloat," but you have also seen fit to share your misguided views with other newspapers such as The Times-Herald, so that your opinions and malice receive a greater audience.

As usual, you have failed to do your homework. What does a sloppy investigation have to do with training of Iowa's crew, the readiness of its systems or our ability to protect the nation's shores?

The investigation never criticized the training of Iowa's crew or the ship's material condition. These were criticisms which the press itself leveled at our ship after accepting the word of deserters, car thieves and other less-stellar performers who passed themselves off as "experts" on our ship. Can we expect the Daily Press to ask Fred Flintstone how to pilot the space shuttle?

This type of reporting can only give the public, the people you have sworn an oath to accurately inform, a false and misleading idea of what really happened aboard our ship before, during and after the explosion.

Ask the Marine officer, who's hair was singed from the back of his head as he courageously fought the 2,000-degree heat to get to his shipmates what training he had or what really happened.

Ask the hundreds of men still aboard, who entered the turret to fight the fires and get to their shipmates, about their experiences of that day.

Ask the engineers who stayed at their posts despite the choking smoke and the threat of additional explosions why they did their jobs, and kept the ship steaming.

Survey our crew, a crew that has endured the pain of innuendo and criticism since that fateful day, with full knowledge that they were innocent of criticism, on how they have felt about their treatment.

We could not comment during the investigation, and we were away serving our nation and protecting our shores during a six-month deployment afterwards. Yet you were unwilling to wait for the investigators to finish their work.

Could it be that your accusations and petty comments had an effect on the way the investigators did their jobs? The media has a major influence on the way we live, and it is impossible to fully get away from that influence. After all, the investigators were human.

Even after our return, you have not let us escape either our own grief or continued criticisms. Articles and editorials such as the ones you have published have made us question the integrity of the media in general, an establishment we are sworn to defend.

It is time to look not at the Iowa, for her time is drawing short, but at the media itself, which has had its own share of shortcomings. It is time to examine those who examine us.

Who should be the "informed source"? What should a reporter accept as evidence in the trial he is about to open within his own media device.

When the media begins quoting its own stories as fact, instead of opinion, it no longer serves the purpose which it was intended for - providing the public with facts. Newspapers such as yours are here for public good. Yet when you thrive on misinformation, neither the public nor your victims benefit.

The Iowa issue is closed. The Iowa crew no longer wishes to participate - we are sick of it. We feel we have been insulted. In your future endeavors, our response will be "no comment." It is our right to ask you to go away.

If, after all that has happened, you want to know about our ship, don't follow us into the parking lots, call us at home or bother our families. Consult Capt. Fred Moosally's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. All the facts and all the truth about Iowa are there. From the weapons testing to our training, the answers were provided.

We are not ashamed of our record or our ship. We are not haphazard in our approach. We are simply the crew of Iowa.

If you had cared to come aboard our ship and see us do our jobs, or even to ask about our contributions during the last deployment, your prejudiced doubts on our abilities to defend the nation's shores would have been shattered. But you didn't ask, and that is the public's real loss.

Forty-nine members of the Chief Petty Officer's Mess of the USS Iowa signed this letter, which was prompted by the March 6 editorial "Trouble afloat." The editorial was written in response to two investigations, one by congressional subcommittees that faulted the Navy's probe of the explosion aboard the Iowa, and one by the Navy that criticized unauthorized testing of the Iowa's guns. The editorial concluded that the explosion, the flawed investigation, the unauthorized testing and other events raised questions about how shipshape the Iowa was and, most important, the ability of other ships in the fleet to carry out their mission.